Music Utilities

With the exploding popularity of Apple iPods, the rapid growth in legal music-download venues, and the latest innovations around PC-based home entertainment systems, digital audio is penetrating the mainstream as never before.

Contents

With the exploding popularity of Apple iPods, the rapid growth in legal music-download venues, and the latest innovations around PC-based home entertainment systems, digital audio is penetrating the mainstream as never before. But what if you want to digitize an old cassette tape, or capture some Internet audio content? And how do you organize and catalog the many thousands of MP3 files that you've amassed?

Here, we look at free utilities that help you take your digital music experience beyond your headphones.

Audacity 1.2.3 (free) packs quite a bit of musical engineering under its open-source hood. The program mimics its more expensive brethrenAdobe Audition and Sound Forgein providing recording and audio fileediting tools, and it's easy enough for beginners while including plenty of advanced features for audiophiles.

You can record from whatever inputs your computer has, and Audacity includes a helpful "what you hear" option, so you can record anything playing on the PC. The program's interface allows for multitrack editing, though the sound-processing filters aren't intuitive or easy for novices.

Audacity also shows some odd choices in its default settings. For example, it records new files as less-than-prudent 44.1-MHz mono waveforms. To record in stereo, you'll have to brave a help file that doesn't always work properly.

But even in the Internet age, beggars can't always be choosers. As a free audio application, Audacity is jam-packed with features that are certainly worth exploring. (Audacity development team, http://audacity.sourceforge.net)

Exact Audio Copy (free beta) provides good error-correction options for the snaps, hisses, and distortion that can sometimes mar audio tracks. The program lets you look up your CD's information on freedb, rip the music to your hard drive, and encode MP3sbut you can do that in Windows. With Exact Audio Copy you can also burn your own CDs from CUE sheets or copy CD to CD, which can be useful. But the program's main draw is that it tracks the music-ripping process, and if something goes wrong, it tells you exactly where and attempts to fix the problem.

On the downside, the utility's plumbing is not up to par. Still in beta, Exact Audio Copy suffers from a lack of documentation. And its menus are bursting with optionsan intimidating sight for the average user.

Exact Audio Copy is quite helpful if you're trying to rip music from scratched CDs. But if you're trying to transfer your CD collection to your hard drive, there are far better programs to pick up. (Exact Audio Copy, www.exactaudiocopy.de)

ID3-TagIT 3.2.1 (free) is a music organizer's dream. The program lets you edit the information tags (artist, album, and so on) attached to every MP3 file you have, and it supports older ID3v1 tags as well as the more popular ID3v2 formats.

The program uses a basic, Windows Explorerlike interface. Once you pick a folder with MP3s in it, ID3-TagIT throws the files into a detail-filled, right-hand window. At that point, editing each file's information is simple.

You can edit each MP3's tag individually or do multiple tags at once. You can also edit the filenames directly, using ID3 information to rename each file. Similarly, ID3-TagIT lets you adjust odd capitalizations of all your files with only a few mouse clicks, sparing you the tedious effort of renaming them one by one. (Michael Pluemper, www.id3-tagit.de)

Simply put, iPodder 1.0 (free) is like an audio version of TiVo that uses Internet radio as the content, grabbing your favorite programming quickly and easily.

After a smooth setup, you navigate to the Podcast Directory tab. Find whatever radio content interests you, and tell iPodder to track it. On the Subscriptions tab, you can check each show's content manually or schedule iPodder to check for updated broadcasts automatically. Once iPodder finds something, it'll download it into the directory of your choosing, and you're left with an instant MP3. You can even set up the program to download content directly to your portable audio player, hence the tool's name.

iPodder's Web site is packed with information about the program, the history of "podcasting," and more. (BoKu Communications, www.ipodder.org)

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month gig turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he has since rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors.
His rise to (self-described) fame in the world of tech journalism began during his stint as an associate editor at Maximum PC, where his love of cardboard-based PC construction and meetings put him in...
More »